Colorful Summer Solstice Wedding at The Tabard Inn | Washington DC Wedding
This Washington DC wedding packed in new traditions, old favorites, and all the color you can handle at the Tabard Inn.
Some couples tell you their love story. Allison and Nick handed me a whole universe, and then let me spend their wedding day running around inside it with a camera and a flash. It was the best kind of assignment there is.
When Allison first reached out, she described their wedding vibe in exactly the words I live for: eclectic, vibrant, colorful, energetic. As a Washington DC wedding photographer, I get a lot of "classic and timeless" in my inbox, and there is NOTHING wrong with that. But, when a bride tells you she wants maximalist patterns, funky art, and photos that land somewhere between "documentary" and "editorial," I'm not afraid to admit that my heart shrieks just a little bit. Now that the day has come and gone, I can confirm: it was an absolutely epic party.
How Allison and Nick Met
Here's my favorite kind of love story: the accidental kind. Allison and Nick both independently uprooted their entire lives (different states and different plans) but landed in Utah around the same time. Like two compasses quietly agreeing on the same direction, they met at work, where Allison is a staff photographer. Nick, it turns out, needed a lot of new portraits. Four of them, to be exact, each for a suspiciously flimsy reason. Allison eventually put it together: this man did not need four headshots. He needed an excuse to keep coming back. It worked.
That's the thing about Allison and Nick that you feel the second you talk to them: they're both people who notice things, who pay attention, who show up.
Allison sees the world through a lens, professionally and personally (we're kindred spirits that way), and she's the kind of person who can walk into any clover patch and somehow find three four-leaf clovers before you've found one. Nick is a pilot who keeps a 1948 WWII-era airplane in flying condition purely because he loves it, the same way he loves sports, food, travel, and figuring out the odds on just about anything. Separately, they're magnetic. Together, watching them on their wedding day, it was easy to see why they work. Allison says Nick has a bottomless emotional depth and an obsession with showering her in adoration, and Nick says he could write a book about her endless, ethereal capacity for love. Spending an evening photographing them, I believe every word of it.
A Wedding as Colorful as They Are
Allison and Nick got married on the summer solstice, the longest, brightest day of the year, which felt exactly right for two people this full of light. The Tabard Inn, one of Washington, DC's most charming and unapologetically quirky historic spots, was the perfect choice for them. If you know the Tabard, you know it's covered wall to wall in art, and this couple was very specifically drawn to the funky, eclectic, slightly cheeky pieces tucked into its corners rather than the stately presidential portraits. I made sure my camera found every one of them.
With around 60 guests, the day had that rare, wonderful intimacy where nobody was a stranger and everybody got seen. And for a couple this detail-obsessed, that mattered enormously. Allison and Nick are maximalists to their core, and their wedding proved it: bold patterns layered against the Tabard's moody rooms, rich textures at every turn, color everywhere you looked. I spent the day chasing down every bit of it, camera and flash in hand, determined not to let a single detail slip past unnoticed.
Their ceremony included hand-fasting, literally, and quite beautifully, tying the knot, held on the Tabard's sun-drenched patio under that long solstice daylight. Small, intimate ceremony spaces like this one are actually my favorite kind of challenge, and this one delivered. There was nowhere to hide, which meant I got to catch every glance, every breath, every hand placement up close. Wide shots held the whole scene, and quiet over-the-shoulder moments held just the two of them.
From there, the day unfolded the way the best wedding days do, not as a rigid script, but as a string of small, real moments strung together. Cocktail hour conversations spilled out of the Red Room, followed by a dinner under lighting so romantic and layered I could have photographed it for hours. There was dancing, because Nick had made it very clear that dancing was the part of the day he was most excited for, right after saying "I do". He made good on that excitement the second the music started. Allison, meanwhile, got exactly what she'd hoped for too: every person she loves, in one room, at the same time. There's something so lovely about a couple who wants the party but treasures the gathering even more, and you could feel that all night.
New Wedding Day Traditions
And then, a new spin on a tradition I wouldn't mind seeing more often: candles on a wedding cake! The two of them leaned in together to blow them out, foreheads nearly touching, laughing before the smoke even cleared. Because why not!
What I loved most about photographing Allison and Nick is that I never had to manufacture a single moment. It was all already there in the way they found each other by accident, in the four portrait sessions that were never really about portraits, in a wedding day built around color and texture and the people who matter most to them. My job was to notice it, the way Allison notices four-leaf clovers: quickly, joyfully, and with an eye trained to catch what most people would walk right past.
Congratulations, Allison and Nick. It was an honor to spend your solstice with you.
Barbara O Photography is a Washington DC wedding photographer specializing in vibrant, candid-meets-editorial storytelling for couples who want their personality, not just their poses, on film.
